


Do Not Go Gentle

by PinkLetterDay



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Angry Sex, Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, In which iris west finally flips her lid, Let Strong Women Have Inconvenient Emotions 2k18, Panic Attacks, Post Episode: s05e02, Rough Sex, Trauma, after four seasons of repressed trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 01:44:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16466324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PinkLetterDay/pseuds/PinkLetterDay
Summary: Iris West-Allen is done being strong, done making promises, done being the one left behind. Barry Allen belongs to her and her alone. The future can’t have him.





	Do Not Go Gentle

She has read somewhere that the worst thing stories taught children is that they can end.

It isn't exactly right.

She's always loved stories. Insatiably curious since she was a little girl, always pressing further, to know more and more and more.

_"And they lived happily ever after," Joe would finish, closing the book. But she was always wide awake with curiosity._

_"But how Daddy?"_

_"What d'you mean baby girl?"_

_"How was it happy? Did they have a big wedding with lots of chocolate cake? Did the prince and princess chase all the bad witches away and tell them they can never come back?"_

_"Er, yeah. All of that. It's what happily ever after means, Iris."_

_She had mulled this, unsatisfied. "Does that mean the princess or the prince never dies?"_

_"Well, no. I mean, I'm sure they both do eventually. When they've both grown old."_

_"Like very, very old?," she pressed. "After all their kids are really grown up and they don't need a Mommy and Daddy anymore?"_

Joe had stuck to songs after that.

But she had continued to make up continuations to Happily Ever After by herself. First for stories (Belle had wound up a world-famous author, Princess Jasmine and Aladdin had made a career of fighting evil sorcerers all over the world, Ariel had become a curator of undersea museum of human things so everyone would know what a dinglehopper really was) then for her own life (she and Barry would get married and be best friends forever and have a grown-up treehouse, she and Barry would become a mystery-solving Kim Possible team, find the Man in Yellow and free his father, she and Barry would find their perfect partners and live next door to each other all their lives, she and Barry would have their dream wedding and grow old together)

Maybe stories are to really blame for making her believe that happiness can be earned. That she can remotely guess at the shape the future would take. That if they just weather out the shit life keeps hailing on them they'll come out the other side into sunshine and roses once and for all.

But life has taught her better where stories had not. Much much better. So it's her own fault for still holding onto Happily Ever Afters. For seeing Nora as the manifestation of theirs. Because stories don't end, baby girl, and princes and princesses can always die young and leave their families behind.

Barry has been busy the whole day bonding with Nora (she's trying to beat back the bitterness of that, that her lack of a mother may have made her a terrible parent to her own child) and so had not had the chance that day to do much more than level a look of concern at her tight, stoic expression. When they return home she continues to evade him, making a beeline for the bathroom before he has even toed off his shoes and getting in bed before he comes out of his own shower.

The mattress dips under his weight followed by a tentatively whispered "Iris?", the warmth of his hand hovering over her shoulder. But the moment passes and he sighs, settles in next to her and turns off the light.

_The sky is a searing red. A vortex gapes from above spewing billowing clouds of dust and electricity._

_A fork of lightning spears down, gripping Barry in crackling, spidering blue veins. She grabs his outstretched hand with both of hers, heaving him back with all her might. But it still pulls him inexorably upwards, prying him loose. She is half-blind and can breathe for the choking clouds of dust, foothold slipping. But it is the familiar sad resignation on his uncowled face that strikes real terror into her heart._

_His fingers begin to slip from hers._

_"Daddy, Daddy, wait! I can help!"_

_A flash of purple and gold lightning by her side. Nora's child-face is screwed up against the wind, brown curls blowing wild. Her heart stops. She freezes in an agonized moment of indecision between holding onto Barry or catching hold of their daughter._

_It's a split second too late. Nora's small fingers close trustingly around her father's gloved hand - just as its ripped away from Iris's own._

_The red sky bears down and swallows both her scream and her family whole._

She bolts upright, the shriek still stuck in her throat, heart hammering fast enough to beat out of her chest.

Barry is still asleep beside her. He's curled into her side, always seeking her warmth. The streetlight glowing through the curtains laves his cheek in amber. His mouth is lax but there is a faint crease between his eyebrows, as though the cares of the day now follow him into sleep as well.

_"You need to keep living your life. Keep growing...keep running for me," his eyes are resigned and sad. But there is a peace in them, a relief that cuts her to the core, leaving her alone in her grief. "Promise me you'll run, Iris."_

The moment had replayed in her head for six months. The nights on nights of the couch wreaking havoc on her spine, unable to disturb their bed. The days upon days of his phantom scent and touch lingering on her skin, his footsteps on the floorboards. The frustration of trying to wring an orgasm from her own body, trying not to remember the way he felt inside her only to crest on a wave of helpless tears.

She had endured by locking hope in a box and ignoring the way it beat and rattled within, letting numbness settle in her holllowed chest. Hurled herself like an axe into the world during the day, and lain awake in the nights, burning in his betrayal.

But somehow the universe had spat him back out, chewed up and delirious, and she had been there to catch him in her arms.

_"I'm trying to be strong but I can't anymore," she cries as he holds her face in his hands. They're warm and electric as the golden reeds of light cocooning them out of time, and her the rod grounding him to the earth._

_But there's that hauntingly familiar resignation in his eyes and she knows what he will ask of her before he forms the words._

Over and over again he has made her promise and each time she's kept her word. It's almost a constant now; the universe tearing him away from her; him finding his way back to her; her existing in limbo until she's called to reel him back from the open maw of Fate. It's like a dance, really.

A neverending, terrifying, capricious dance.

Until one of them slips.

It will be even worse this time around. Barry will smile at her every day from their daughter's dimples. Following her with questions, curious fingers examining every painful detail of the life he had left behind, never letting her turn away from his absence. Until Nora too runs where she cannot follow, after her father.

This time, neither of them will ever come back.

She can't do it.

The high whine of anxiety that had been building all day suddenly coalsces into terror. It claws up her lungs, closing her throat, a living, writhing thing trying to burst out of her skin. The room spins and swims in amber, there's not enough air...she can't breathe...she can't _breathe_...

"Iris! Iris!," she dimly hears Barry shouting. He's shaking her in his arms. "Iris, breathe! Come on, breathe with me!"

The world rushes back as she breaks the surface. Barry's face is twisted in fear, cradling her against him. The floor is hard and rough beneath the tangle of blankets and she realizes she's fallen off the bed.

"Sweetheart, what is it? What's wrong?"

She tries to tell him she's okay, it was just a...it's nothing. Instead a high wild keen erupts from her that she can't stop.

His heart breaks in his eyes. "Oh, Iris."

Drawing her into his lap, he wraps his arms around her, pulling her slight frame into the warmth of his broad, bare chest. He strokes her hair, her face and draws soothing circles over her back, crooning comort low in her ear.

"I can't do it. I don't want to be strong anymore," her voice is raw and ragged against his neck. "It hurts - it hurts -,"

"Shhh, its okay -,"

" _No, it's not okay!_ ," she shoves him so hard she falls off his lap. "None of this is okay! Why does everything in the universe keep taking you from me? What are we doing so wrong -,"

Barry catches her hands, eyes so achingly tender she wants to hit him. "You're not doing anything wrong, Iris -"

"Then why do you keep leaving me?," it bursts out of her and his eyes go wide at the clear accusation. But she doesn't care. "Every time you have a chance to leave me you take it! You think I never saw it," the ugly writhing thing has hooks that dig into her chest now, gleeful at finally being free. "You wanted to die ever since you came back from Flashpoint! You tried to make Caitlin kill you in front of me! You tried to hand yourself over to the Dominators! You - you couldn't deal with having to live without me so you tried to offer yourself as a sacrifice instead - you were glad when the Speed Force came for you! You thought it was your penance! And then in court...you keep sacrificing yourself and making me to go on, like I'm not dying inside - like it isn't fucking torture -"

He clutches her shoulders, his own jaw set. "Iris, I have never thought for a moment -"

" _Then why do you keep asking me to be strong_?," she hurls it at him in a scream. "Why do you always lie down and accept it, like its what you deserve, like you don't have a choice?"

"I _don't_ have a choice!," he shouts right back and she's knocked back for all of half a second before the creature exhilarates in his anger, hungering for more. "You think I want to leave you? That I don't want more than anything to be with you? But my choices almost always come down to either me or the world, Iris! I thought you understood that!"

She has understood it. She has even once made the deliberate choice herself to stop searching for him to focus on the greater urgency even though it had nearly killed her to do it. She has always understood.

She just doesn't want to understand anymore.

"I don't want to do this," she whispers and something in her breaks under the weight of its truth. "I can't do it anymore, Barry. Please don't ask me to."

He swallows, hands dropping to his sides. "What are you saying?" His breath hitches, "you - you want to leave?"

Does she?

Can she? Can she really bear to leave him and the baby they're destined to have together? Risk Nora being wiped from the face of existence; this stranger she's known for less than two days, but whose face is a perfect map of Barry's own, whose smile feels as familiar as her own heartbeat?

No.

She belongs to Iris, whether she wants to or not. Just like Barry is hers, whether he wants to fight for them or not.

He has that same tired resignation pulling at the corners of his eyes beyond the anxiety and heartbreak. It makes her furious. He doesn't _get_ to be tired and resigned - not when she has fought like a hellcat for every part of him she could have for herself. She cannot be the only one that holds on when Fate beats them both down, who has to light in him the fire to survive.

His bare torso is pale as jade in the yellow light of the bedside lamp, pink splotches moving over hollow cheeks, hair sleep-rumpled and eyes glimmering. He is beautiful and vulnerable and every part of him _hers_.

The future can't _have_ him.

She surges forward and crushes his mouth underneath hers, pulling in the gasp from his lungs. He melts beneath her as her hands sear across his flesh, letting her suck and bite and grasp and take, hungry for his skin. Her fingers rake his scalp, fingers winding through his lush hair, grasping it to wrench his head back and rake her teeth open-mouthed over his chin and throat. He’s hard for her in seconds, already straining when she plunges her hand into his boxers.

Her nightshirt is torn off and his mouth reaches for her nipples but she pins down his broad shoulders and mounts him instead. She engulfs him to the hilt with no warning, in one smooth practised glide that makes him jerk and cry out. Her clit throbs at the sharp pain of his fingers digging grooves into her hips. Pleasure licks up her spine as she makes a bow of her back, the angle the deepest she can get, his cock so long and rigid it's almost too much, but its still not _enough_.

She fucks herself on him in a frenzy she's never experienced before, riding him in wild abandon, chasing something deeper than mere desire, something desperate and feral, uncaring of the friction scraping her insides with a discomfort bordering on pain. She welcomes it, the ache between her legs, the pain-pleasure irradiating from her pelvis. Barry tries to rub her clit, but she bats his hands away. Can't he see that's not the point? That what she wants is this, to keep him buried where nothing can wrench him away?

But the inferno between them continues to build. If it peaks then its over, she doesnt want it to be over, its _not enough_ , she needs  _more_  of him.

The pain in her thighs suddenly makes her aware of Barry gripping her there, trying to slow her down, concern battling through his own incredible arousal. "Iris," her name strangled in a moan, "Iris, please -,"

She responds by clamping her arms and legs down hard around him and unceremoniously _flipping_ them over. His weight bears down on her with a grunt, almost crushes her chest underneath him and its sweet relief and delight; this is the more she wants, _needs_ ; the whole of his naked flesh pressing hers into the unyielding floor.

She moans in satisfaction as pain blooms at her shoulder blades and the carpet scrapes her back. Her hands fist in his hair, keeping his head in place for her to suck on his tongue filthy and savage as he moans, her legs a vise around his hips, the balls of her feet digging into his ass, her nails raking trails of fire down his shoulders and back. She pulls him inside her, all of him, as deep as she can and then deeper, trying to feel his pulse under her own heartbeat. She's going to keep him there, him and their baby, both of them safe inside her. Imprint them in her blood, her flesh, her bruises, fill her nostrils in his smell and her ears with the sound of his grunts and the trip-hammer of his heart against hers. She's going to clamp down on the present with sweat and blood and teeth, milking every second from the unrelenting pain that trapped her in purgatory and the need that stops time between them as long as its not allowed release.

But then his grip tightens hard on her own hips. She looks up at him to find an answering fury she’s never seen before, eyes dark as flint and sparking gold, pinning hers in place.

Holding her down, he wrests back control and hikes her knees even higher. Then he begins to  _piston_  into her at an angle so intense she nearly whites out.

Lightning heat pulses through her body, skittering electricity beneath her eyelids and _no Barry no_ she doesnt want to come, she just wants him to stay inside her forever. Her nails bite down, hard enough to draw blood, and she can only plead in high desperate keens, begging him not to come, begging him to not make them come. But he only takes her quivering lip between his teeth.

"I'm - never - leaving - you," he grits, punctuating every word with a punishing thrust that drives him deeper, harder inside her than he's ever been. Her eyes roll back in her head but he grasps her chin and forces her to look at him. "You're - mine!"

Her blood _sings_ with the fire of his own as he tilts her mouth up and crushes the breath from her lungs, tongue seeking the taste of her tears. And the pleasure crescends higher and higher.

The last of her resistance is ripped away in one last slam. She explodes like a dying star, her arms and legs and inner walls pulling him in one last time so hard it feels like gravity. She's weeping as he spills free inside her, his open mouth hot against the broken capilliaries of her neck, warmth coating her insides and seeping out from the join in their bodies. It occurs to her distantly that this might be when she becomes pregnant, that in her desperation to keep him with her they might have conceived the child who would presage the begining of their end.

Her body continues to spasm in aftershocks as he softens inside her, mouths fused through tears. Her legs wound around him are too numb to detangle when he pulls her onto his lap, clinging to him like a child. "Don't leave me," she whimpers into his neck. "Please don't leave me."

"I won't leave you. I'll never leave you," he chants over and over, "I'll never leave you, Iris." 

The violence of feeling ebbs and gives way to exhaustion as they lay tangled around each other, sweat and tears and spend sealing into the heat of their skin. But sleep does not come. Their fingers thread together over his heart and hold each other so close she can't tell where she ends and he begins, watching the night bleed into a silver blue dawn.

Iris rests her head on her husband’s chest, listening to the sound of his heartbeat. It’s fast as a bee’s wings even in rest, outstripping hers by magnitudes. Even now, safe in her arms, the Speed Force courses through his blood, a Siren song pulling him away from her, inevitable as time itself. 

 _Eleven years old._ _They’re lying huddled in blankets in the darkness of a blackout, listening to the howling storm outside. Lightning splits the sky open and thunder rattles the very walls of the old house. Her friend is shaking, white with terror as she holds him close._

_“It’s okay, Barry. I’m right here. I’ll keep you safe. I promise."_

**Author's Note:**

> This has been one of the hardest pieces of writing I have ever worked on, so comments are more appreciated than ever. 
> 
> You can also visit me at [pinkletterday](https://pinkletterday.tumblr.com) on tumblr. <3


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